"I think he should have got more credit," Mr Eady told the Telegraph. "Back then they didn't pay much notice to him but now everybody's trying to make a dollar off him. He was the one that did all the work."

The official history of the whiskey has always been that the young Jack Daniel learned his trade when he went to work for a Tennessee preacher called Dan Call who also operated a distillery.

A man believed to be the son of Nearis Green sits next to Jack Daniel in this photograph from the late 1800s

Green, who was known as "Uncle Nearest," was described by Call as the "best whiskey maker that I know of" and put in charge of the distillery.

When Daniel set up his own operation in 1866, the year after slavery was abolished, he took Green and two of his nine children, George and Eli, with him.

Mr Eady, who himself worked at the Jack Daniel's distillery in Lynchburg, Tennessee from 1946 to 1989, said Green would have been surprised to know that people were still drinking whiskey made from the same recipe he used.

It tastes the same as it did when I first tasted it in 1938Claude Eady

"I feel proud of what he did because it's pretty big right now. You got Jack Daniel's everywhere even in England," he said. "I don't know how he'd feel if he were here, but I think he'd be please because it's never changed. It tastes the same as it did when I first tasted it in 1938. I still drink it now. They don't use no sugar that's the secret."

Mr Eady said his exact relationship to the slave and original master distiller was lost in the mists of time. He said: "My mamma told me about him and said were were related. She didn't tell me much, but she said he helped make the whiskey. I didn't pay too much attention and didn't ask too many questions about it back then.

"When I was working there people knew but nobody talked too much about it. All the people I worked with are gone now."

Whiskey making was not Green's only talent. He played the fiddle at public dances in Lynchburg and joined the Fisk Jubilee Singers in nearby Nashville.

Toward the end of the 19th Century the group toured Europe and performed spirituals including Swing Low, Sweet Chariot in front of Queen Victoria. The Queen was said to have commented that they must come from "Music City" which reputedly led to Nashville becoming known by that moniker, which is still in use today.